Pa. man helps get All My Babies' Mamas' reality TV show pulled

Aston resident Ulysses Butch Slaughter knows how to take up a cause, especially if it involves children.

So when the founder of the Odyssey Project got word that rapper Shawty Lo was developing a reality TV series for the Oxygen network called “All My Babies’ Mamas” Slaughter just couldn’t sit and watch.

So, now, after delivering a petition to Comcast headquarters earlier this week with more than 37,000 signatures, no one will be watching the show. NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast, announced that it was canceling the show before it hit the air. “All My Babies’ Mamas” was reportedly to feature Shawty Lo and the 11 children he had with 10 mothers.

“This was about the exploitation of children,” said Slaughter, who also credited author Sabrina Lamb and the Parent Television Council for helping in the campaign. “We know there is opposition and there are people looking to compromise communities in the interest of profit.But this is where we draw the line.”

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Shawty Lo, whose birth name is Carlos Walker, had a solo album called “Units In the City” released in 2008 on his own D4L label. In June 2012, he signed with rapper 50 Cent’s label, G-Unit Records. Shawty Lo was born in the Bankhead section of Atlanta and is scheduled to release a second album, “Bankhead Born and Raised,” sometime this year.

Slaughter made it clear he’s not against Shawty Lo’s musical career, or even a show featuring Shawty Lo and the mothers of his children.

“I likened it to a father who had decided to prostitute his children,” Slaughter said. “If we were to watch that happen, or if any of us saw a man sell them into slavery, my hope is that there would be no ambiguity in what he was doing.

“My position is that if you are trying to do a show, just do you and the women and keep the children off the set.”

Part of the issue, too, could be whether Shawty Lo is in need of the money that a reality show would bring. According to celebritynetworth.com, Shawty Lo’s net worth is $2.5 million.

“If this is an act of desperation, then we as a community do need to come and support him,” Slaughter said. “But we can’t support him to broadcast this type of international image. We can’t allow for his children to be filmed because it will impact other families and children.”

Slaughter had been trying to make a positive impact on women and children through the Odyssey Project, which has a goal of bringing family reconciliation through father restoration. Slaughter has produced a short film called “Forgiving Our Fathers, Forgiving Ourselves” and also wrote the book, “Dear Daddy, I Hate You: letters to my mother’s killer.”

Slaughter, who grew up in Chicago, was 12 when his father murdered his mother in the apartment they lived in.

While Slaughter has campaigned for years for fathers to become more responsible, he knows more campaigns may be needed to stop shows similar to Shawty Lo’s from appearing on TV.

“We know other people are out there talking about similar shows,” he said. “We can’t afford to have any of them. We have people calling us and giving us congratulations, but we should have never allowed it to come to this. We should be concerned that it got to this point.”